aol aolsearch porn

August 10, 2006 9:13 AM

I've been perusing the leaked AOL database, and it's kind of disturbing how many users are searching for child porn. Does anyone have this DB in mysql and can run some numbers on what percentage of users are doing these searches? What about searches for plain vanilla porn... how common is that?
posted by chef_boyardee to computers & internet (10 comments total)

That's an intresting site, but the metafilter thread has direct download links
posted by delmoi at 9:29 AM on August 10, 2006

Thanks -- yes, the original tables as leaked are what I was asking about.
posted by chef_boyardee at 9:37 AM on August 10, 2006

I loaded about half the database into a local MySQL server (393128 distinct user ids).

Only 147 users made searches containing both the strings "child" and "porn": 0.037%. A pretty small percentage actually, and some of those did not appear to actually be searching for child pornography, but rather information about it.

But pedophiles might be using different words in their search. If you want I can run a different broader search query.
posted by anonymous_k at 9:49 AM on August 10, 2006 [1 favorite]

http://www.aolsearchdatabase.com/

Should do it for ya.
posted by SirStan at 9:52 AM on August 10, 2006

Oh and 'porn' has 11839 distinct users, about 3%. Using a broader search to include terms like 'nude and 'naked' brought the result to 19077, or almost 5%.
posted by anonymous_k at 9:53 AM on August 10, 2006

My first web job involved analyzing Yahoo's logs (this was before Altavista, let alone Google, when Yahoo was king of the search domain.)

Even then, searching for porn was a conspicuous plurality (but I couldn't cite stats.)
posted by Zed_Lopez at 10:09 AM on August 10, 2006

I would bet that people searching for child porn have their own language for it, like any other fetish-preference group would. When I want porn, I don't type "porn" into Google, I search for slash, mmf threesomes, bukkake, etc., etc.. Child porn is such a hot button, I'd be willing to bet that a lot of people who search simply for "child porn" want to see if the Molest Dot Com stories run by the 11 o'clock news are really true. You'd get a better idea of how many people are really looking for if you knew the language for it.
posted by headspace at 10:38 AM on August 10, 2006

What are the results for things like "lolita" or "pre-teen" or "underage"? Those are more likely to be used, I'd think.
posted by AmbroseChapel at 3:08 PM on August 10, 2006

My guess is that, given the proliferation of porn on the web and the idiosyncrasy of people's sexual predilections, most users who've been on the web for any length of time are going to learn to narrow their searches. If you just search for "porn," you'd be inundated with bullshit.

For example, consider user 1439539. He has a lot of gay-oriented searches that seem fairly targeted in their language ("sexy free gay beef") and voyeuristic inquiries ("free hidden cam boys lockerroom" and "has a shower scene in it" and "male nude beaches"). My personal favorite of his search queries: "she screamed your balls are hanging out". I suspect most porn-surfers have similarly targeted searches.

(But then, maybe he's a fairly sophisticated searcher --notice his high-brow cultural searches: "Macbeth costumes," "hebrew literature in translation," "westward ho twelfth night," "new folger library".)

http://www.aolstalker.com/user.php?uid=1439539
posted by jayder at 7:48 PM on August 10, 2006

Your search - "she screamed your balls are hanging out" - did not match any documents.

That is disappointing.
posted by Prince Nez at 12:45 AM on August 11, 2006